It provides funds for legal defense in court, presents amicus curiae briefs, defends individuals and new technologies from what it considers abusive legal threats, works to expose government malfeasance, provides guidance to the government and courts, organizes political action and mass mailings, supports some new technologies which it believes preserve personal freedoms and online civil liberties, maintains a database and web sites of related news and information, monitors and challenges potential legislation that it believes would infringe on personal liberties and fair use, and solicits a list of what it considers are abusive patents with intentions to defeat those that it considers are without merit.

In April 1990, Barlow had been visited by a U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation agent in relation to the theft and distribution of the source code for a series of Macintosh ROMs.

In late June, Barlow held a series of dinners in San Francisco with major figures in the computer industry to develop a coherent response to these perceived threats.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation was formally founded on July 10, 1990, by Kapor and Barlow, who very soon after elected Gilmore, Wozniak, and Stewart Brand to join them on the board of directors.

[citation needed] The creation of the organization was motivated by the massive search and seizure on Steve Jackson Games executed by the United States Secret Service early in 1990.

Similar but officially unconnected law-enforcement raids were being conducted across the United States at about that time as part of a state–federal task force called Operation Sundevil.

[10][11] In 1994, Berman parted ways with the EFF and formed the Center for Democracy and Technology,[10] while Drew Taubman briefly took the reins as executive director.

In 1995, under the auspices of Executive Director Lori Fena, after some downsizing and in an effort to regroup and refocus on their base of support, the organization moved offices to San Francisco, California.

[10][11] There, it took up temporary residence at John Gilmore's Toad Hall, and soon afterward moved into the Hamm's Building at 1550 Bryant St. After Fena moved onto the EFF board of directors for a while, the organization was led briefly by Tara Lemmey, followed by Barry Steinhardt (who had come from the closely allied Technology and Liberty Program at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and eventually returned to the ACLU).

They coordinated and supported the construction of the EFF DES cracker (nicknamed Deep Crack), using special purpose hardware and software and costing $210,000.

The EFF has long taken a stance against strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP) as attempts to stymie free speech and advocated for effective anti-SLAPP legislation.

[21][failed verification][22][non-primary source needed] Many of the most significant technology law cases have involved the EFF, including MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., Apple v. Does, and others.

[26] The EFF has long been an advocate of paper audit trails for voting machines and testified in support of them after the 2004 United States presidential election.

Cindy Cohn underscored their commitment to upholding free speech online, writing that "once you've turned it on, whether through pressure or threats of lawsuits, the power to silence people doesn't just go in one direction.

[38][non-primary source needed] The organizations argued that many providers can only moderate content by revoking access to an entire website, leaving end-users with little transparency or recourse.

[41][non-primary source needed] After the forum returned behind an open-source bot detection tool, the EFF stopped classifying DDoS protection services as infrastructure because they cannot determine whether a website stays online or not.

[non-primary source needed] EFF's first book was published in 1993 as The Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet, a beginners' how-to manual by contracted technical writer Adam Gaffin, and made available for free download in many formats.

[non-primary source needed] The organization's second book, Protecting Yourself Online (ISBN 9780062515124), an overview of digital civil liberties, was written in 1998 by technical writer Robert B. Gelman and EFF Communications Director Stanton McCandlish, and published by HarperCollins.

[non-primary source needed] A digital book, Pwning Tomorrow, an anthology of speculative fiction, was produced in 2015 as part of EFF's 25th anniversary activities, and includes contributions from 22 writers, including Charlie Jane Anders, Paolo Bacigalupi, Lauren Beukes, David Brin, Pat Cadigan, Cory Doctorow, Neil Gaiman, Eileen Gunn, Kameron Hurley, James Patrick Kelly, Ramez Naam, Annalee Newitz, Hannu Rajaniemi, Rudy Rucker, Lewis Shiner, Bruce Sterling, and Charles Yu.

[56] The agitprop art group Psychological Industries has independently issued buttons with pop culture tropes such as the logo of the Laughing Man from the anime series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (with the original The Catcher in the Rye quotation replaced with the slogan of Anonymous), a bleeding roller derby jammer, and the "We Can Do It!"

[57] In late June 2014 the EFF flew a GEFA-FLUG AS 105 GD/4[58] blimp owned by, and in conjunction with, Greenpeace over the NSA's Bluffdale-based Utah Data Center in protest against its purported illegal spying.